Recent doodles

Recently, I have been incorporating some form of sketching, doodling, and writing into my meditation time. Yesterday morning, I spent some time sharpening all of my pencil crayons and although my preference is black and white, it is nice to play with colour once in a while. This picture of being re-born out of a lily type flower signifies a time of change and growth.

The next two doodles came out of sleepless night in a Toronto hotel. Know models in sight I pulled open a Where Magazine and found photos of the Dali Lama and Margaret Atwood to pose as models for my middle of the night meditative art time.

Me. Just a sketch of my left hand, symbolic of the things I do, write, draw, make, and even those I touch, are touched from or created from a place in my heart.

Almost wordless Wednesday

Storm Girl – All in a name

I learned about spirit names from my Aboriginal friends and teachers, and thought it time to set the record straight and change my legal name, Roberta, to my spirit name, Robin. I think everyone has a spirit name, that name that came to their parents in a dream, from the spirit of a relative living or past, from the spirit of a character in a book or movie, from the spirit of the calendar or nature, or even like in my case from the spirit of a nurse.

My mother told me the story of my naming many times while I was growing up. Because my birth was such a stormy process for her and because of the October gales blowing the night I was born, my parents decided to call me Gayle. In hindsight that name choice seemed to foretell of the many storms this life would travel through always finding safe harbor in the end. But it wasn’t to be, and Great Spirit told this to my parents through the Spirit of a young Scottish Nurse who cared for me. Everytime she brought me to my mother for feeding, she would say, “Here comes the little Robin”,  my tiny mouth resembled that of a baby robin searching for it’s next meal. The name stuck and I was brought home as Robin. The next Sunday in church the very passionate monsignor in his sermon, stated clearly that it was time for people to stop naming their children after birds, flowers, months etc. I would guess he was looking for strong biblical names, and so it was, my legal name on my birth certificate was Roberta Claire. Claire is my mother’s name and I carry it proudly as a sign that I am the perfect balance of femininity and masculinity for me, with the strength of character that comes with that harmony. Roberta has always been shortened to Robin, and was only an small annoyance when it had to appear on my social insurance number or when a manager at work would pick up on it from employment docs and call me Roberta to get a reaction…Of course they did. More recently, I went through the process of getting an enhanced drivers license to use as identification in place of a passport, and found that all my government I.D needed to be changed to show Roberta as my given name. I am being paged at airports as Roberta...When I go to the doctor I'm Roberta...I feel like I am in the middle of an identity crisis and now it has become a problem…a small storm to go through…and believe me I have been storming.  Here I am 61 years later, setting the record straight, and legally reclaiming my spirit name as my legal name.  I am Robin…I am Robin Claire…I am Robin Claire, the storm girl who always finds safe harbor!

Introductory Post

The days keep getting shorter, a reminder that my time here is growing shorter with every passing season. I have known 241 season changes and I have vivid memories of the excitement of each transformation. Spring breakup with the ice moving out of the rivers and lakes, water trickling through the leftover winter salt and sand accumulated along the sides of the roads, the fresh aroma of newly exposed soil and rotted foliage in the woods, and most of all the earlier mornings heralded in by the wake-up call of thousands of returning  song birds. It is always so exciting to see the first robin, the first crocus, and new moms walking their winter babies when the magic of spring thaws the ground and warms the air. At times in our part of the world, the shift from spring to summer is less obvious, and definitely not defined by a specific date. It is defined by the day on the Sand River, when a late spring snow and cold temperatures give way to sunshine and warm winds turn to scorching heat by afternoon. It is when you can be wearing mittens one day and shorts the next. What I treasure most is the feel of the warm sun on my arms and the gift of seeing and smelling the seasonal arrival of many summer flowers. I am always amazed that every shrub of a particular plant family bloom on the same day. Summer leaves me in awe of nature!  Sixty autumns…what can I say? My eyes have seen billions of brilliant orange, brown, yellow and crimson leaves. I have heard the Canada geese in the sky as they move south for the winter, and my yard has been busy with squirrels and chipmunks gathering provisions before the ground is covered with snow. Evenings become longer with more time to reflect and write. Just as I think I can’t take the darkness any more, nature provides a gift of light through a blanket of snow reflected by the moon or sun to bring me alive once more. This is why for many years as the first snowflakes would flutter to the ground, I would put on happy Christmas music and call my best friend to share our excitement about the light. So here I am, 61 autumns, 60 springs, 60 summers and 60 winters, and I ask myself how I have recorded those times and the simultaneous life experiences and events I lived through. How will I record the many more to come? That will be the nature of this blog:  Looking back and forward through pictures, sketches, doodles, essays, and poems. Hope to see you here.